 | | Assessing the drug scene in Zimbabwe | | Mainline is setting out to assess the drug scene in five provinces in Zimbabwe. A team of three researchers are working together with the Zimbabwe Civil Liberties Drug Network in the first quarter of 2022. The goal: to gain an insight into which drugs are commonly used and to recommend health interventions. | |
|
|
 | | The open drug scene in Athens | | Project leader Ingrid Bakker visited one of Mainline’s partner organisations, Positive Voice, in Athens. "In four hours, I saw at least a hundred people who were using in the streets, many of them with poor health and some of them injecting in plain sight." | |
|
|
.png?v=20220308164933) | | Gender-based violence in Kenya | Prison Health in Indonesia | | Mainline has had the honour of working closely with the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition (ITPC) in the past years. Via the consortium ITPC established with the support of the Robert Carr Fund, Mainline could work on two important topics: gender-based violence against women who use drugs in Kenya and prison health for people who use drugs in Indonesia. | |
|
|
.png?v=20220309104259) | | Chemsex in Georgia | The Médecins du Monde (MdM) team in Georgia are seeking to establish a response to the emerging health needs of people who engage in chemsex in the country. MdM asked Mainline to build the capacity of two community-based organisations. – Equality Movement and Mandala - to support this aspiration. In November and December of last year we organised a series of online training sessions.
The result, Chemsex IEC materials have been developed and are now being distributed to clients of the community-based organisations. Moreover, their services have been broadened, with chemsex ‘kits’ now being a standard part of their offer. In 2022, Mandala and Equality movement will also perform a community mapping and monitoring in field. | |
|
|
 | | Introducing the Drug Decriminalisation [e]Course | In the past months IDPC, together with Mainline, Health[E]Foundation and Frontline AIDS have worked on the Drug decriminalisation [e]Course. This learning course is free-to-access online. When implemented properly, decriminalisation of drug use and personal possession can have significant benefits for the health, wellbeing and rights of people who use drugs - yet this approach can sometimes be difficult to advocate for as it counterbalances decades of public and political messaging from a global ‘war on drugs’.
The course includes seven modules and has been designed so that participants can take just one module, or all seven, and in any order they prefer. Each module should take between 1 and 2 hours to complete, including videos and activities – and participants receive a certificate at the end of each module. | |
|
|
 | | Recommendation: Harm reduction course | Are you interested to follow an engaging and comprehensive course on harm reduction? Our friends from the harm reduction field INPUD, Médecins du Monde and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine developed a MOOC on harm reduction: a massive open online course.
We can highly recommend this course to anyone with an interest in harm reduction practice, community involvement and advocacy. | |
|
|
 | | Poppi News: XTC shop | Have you ever imagined a world where the sales of a drug such as MDMA (xtc) is regulated by the state? You walk into a pharmacy or shop to buy your pills with no need to revert to an illicit market? Our social enterprise Poppi will set up a public experiment this summer to help us envision under what conditions xtc could be sold in a legal way. The public can visit three types of outlets and form an opinion on the acceptability of each of these. Look out for this next pop-up in Utrecht, due for launch in the summer of 2022.
Do you happen to be in town before the summer? You can still visit our current pop-up ‘Worlds of Opiates’ until the end of March 2022 at the Amsterdam Central station. | |
|
|
